[FINAL, FINAL] CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #7 (Apr 11, 2018): Thanks to those of you who have responded to the Questionnaire. The feedback is extremely helpful. If you haven't responded yet and you participated in the class - or even if you didn't participate - please fill that out and I will gift you 20 Breath of the Wild screenshots from my Switch.
[FINAL] CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #6 (Apr 9, 2018): We've reached the end of the homework extension period and this class officially comes to end. What a month! It's been a thrill to see each of you forge your characters, learn new things, share tips with each other, and offer critiques along the way.
This thread will be open indefinitely but it's officially at the end of it's "class lifespan" meaning I won't be able to commit weekly time to it anymore and I will unpin it from the forum topics list. I'll pop in occasionally if I see activity but you all are more than welcome to keep working on their characters here if you wish!
UPDATE: Closing post on page 44 and XP has been added to each participating account.
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #5 (Mar 28, 2018): Week 4's stream is archived and available via the Past Events button on the Live Event page. Also a reminder that I'm extending the 'deadline' of this month and will be keeping this thread alive through the end of the first week in April. Hopefully that gives you all a bit more time to get your characters done!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #4 (Mar 26, 2018): Week 3, done! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. I'm quite impressed by the neutralization and retoplogy work I've seen. It's a lot of work and I can see that effort in the WIPs and especially completed submissions.
Week 4 - the final week - dives into adding color to our model, primarily in the form of creating textures. Check out this week's breakdown a little further down in this description and see you tomorrow at the Live Event!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #3 (Mar 19, 2018): Week 2 is accomplished and I'm finally caught up on submissions! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. We have some impressive character concept sculpts underway. In fact, I have yet to bestow a grade lower than an A this week.
Week 3 continues our 3-week character building production. Specifically we're going to look at pursuing an animation friendly version of our character - both how and why we would do this. See you tomorrow at the Live Event! Don't forget to RSVP.
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #2 (Mar 12, 2018): Week 1 is done! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. It's been a lot of fun seeing your caricature work and concept art choices.
Week 2 begins the 3-week process of building a character based on the concepts we choose. Don't forget to RSVP to the Live Event tomorrow - See you then!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #1 (Mar 5, 2018): Class is in session! Today officially begins the BC2-1803 class. Please check the syllabus below for Week 1's focus and assignments. Begin watching the pre-recorded courses if you haven't already and begin looking for a cool, stylized character design for creating in 3D this month. The first Live Event is tomorrow at 2pm EST - SEE YOU THERE! 😎
Welcome to the CGCookie Class: Creating Stylized Characters with Blender! This class is designed to teach you everything you need to know about building stylized 3D characters. If you’re diligent in watching all content and hitting homework deadlines, by the end you will have a modeled and textured stylized character! It’s an intermediate-to-advanced class which means you’ll do best by having some experience with Blender and 3D modeling before committing to this class.
This is the second "Class" format where Citizen members are invited to focus together on a particular topic/skill for a month. Participation looks like this:
WHEN? The class will take place from March 5th through March 31st
Abstract: Stylization is any deviation from realism. Thus it’s a broad spectrum from slight liberty away from reality to extreme abstraction of reality. This week we're going to sift through various examples of stylized characters, noting their qualities, and categorizing a spectrum of stylization.
Goal of the Week: Train your eye and mind to stylize your perception. Practice simplifying and exaggerating reality. Loosen up your sculpting approach (gestural sculpting).
Pre-recorded course to watch: Art of Sculpting: Caricature Chapter
Week 1 Live Event (Already happened and archived!)
Homework:
Abstract: Story plays a big part in stylization. Not necessarily ‘narrative’ but background, personality, and purpose. The success of a character is strengthened by its developmental arc. The best artists create characters that are more than the sum of its pixels; more than the sum of its brush strokes and polygons; more than its final render.
Goal of the Week: Develop a story for your character; one that can fuel your creative workflow for the rest of the month. Then channel that story into the first stage of sculpting.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 2 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: At this point a decision needs to be made about our character sculptures: A) Leave it as a sculpture or B) optimize it for ‘production’. Leaving it as a sculpture means it’s a static sculpture that can be painted, rendered, or 3D printed but not animated. Optimizing it for production means you turn your sculpture into a model that’s easiest to work with up to and including animation. If you opt for optimization, this week is mostly a technical and problem-solving task. We need to both retopologize our mesh and also neutralize it if the sculpt is posed.
Goal of the Week: Understand the concept of “production-friendly” and practice retopology.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 3 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: Like Dorothy, our characters have so far lived in a black and white world. This week we’re leaving Kansas and adding color. There’s many methods for creating our character texture(s) including hand-painting, baking maps that accent the painting process (great for the less painterly character artists), as well as photo-sourcing. There's also a couple different formats: Vertex Colors and UV/Textures.
Goal of the Week: Get comfortable with painting textures.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 4 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
This thread is reserved for CG Cookie Citizens that are participating in the "Creating Stylized Characters with Blender" class. Its purpose is to serve as central communication for all participating Citizens (excluding Hobby plan Citizens) to ask me and each other questions and to post homework. As the instructor of the class, I will be monitoring this thread on a daily basis (especially Mon-Thurs) throughout the month of March to review homework and answer questions.
Free members are welcome to observe the thread but please respect that communication is reserved for Citizens.
First, this sculpture is very high-quality! Unmistakable as Mr. Bean - Nice work. I do agree with Cody about the 10-20% exaggeration. What's funny is Mr. Beans face is already extreme in reality lol. So he already kinda looks like a caricature.
But I'd like to see you try and push the features to a 50%+ level. Really good stuff so far, Kenny!
Will keep those points in mind for the next sculpt. Thank you :D
Just wanted to add my "getting started" screenshot. This is merely a few hours into it. 
Decided to go for a Benedict Cumber-bust of Dr. Strange. ;)
Focusing mainly on the long face, intense eyes, pronounced cheekbones, and gaunt cheeks.
Did I think it was ready to show off just yet? No, not by a longshot! Did I push myself to post it anyway for accountability and participation reasons? Yes. Yes I did. :P
arcangel_zero7 Nice job so far! You've done a good job of isolating the features that should be exaggerated. I think what you need to work on is maintaining realistic facial anatomy while you push the features into caricature. It's important to remember that stylization is sort of a mockery of realism and natural features. Specifically I'd round out the cheek bones and make sure they fade out up around the eye and back toward the temple. Also the areas above the corners of the mouth (should be creased in rather than puffed out) as well as below the bottom lip could use some attention. Nice progress though keep it up
Homework submission Week 1
I decided to go with Devin Townsend and not only because he's bold (well I guess it helped a little tbh) but because I think he's a great musician and an awesome dude of course.
During the sculpt I struggled with the stylizing and kind of started over at least three times. Every time I started to tweak all the face features what seemed important in his face, after few hours I realized that it was going more towards realism and it looked not like a caricature at all.
So now it's time to settle because and get some concept done for my character. Here is the Sketchfab and reference I used. Please shout some of those facial features that play big role, I think I don't have too good eye for that. I guess all I noticed was the strong jaw and damn straight nose
Just thought id mention it, incase others like me who are still starting out.
for a good starting bust block, mind theres the 'basehead' that was available as a download for the caracature course ( first of this weeks prerecorded material). im just using it as a nice quick starting block to get going.
Had some tough time with the guy...
So, does he resemble someone or I failed miserably? :)
I'd say you're off to a great start, Kyle! I like that you've honed in on an elongated face - a recognizable feature of Benedict. And I like Matt's feedback - I second his notes.
Here's some annotations over your image:
Note the distinct slant of Benedict's eyes and brow. Compared to yours which are fairly straight horizontally. Also the upside-down triangular shape of his nose. My eye immediately went to these features for exaggeration.
Also he's got distinct but short laugh lines straight down the sides of his nostrils, which is a feature missing from your sculpt. Also the lower lip is a distinct feature on Benedict that isn't formed with your current WIP.
I'm looking forward to seeing how you progress with this one - Keep up the good work!
I agree with malhomsi that you've dialed in the likeness pretty well. And I see what you mean about circling back around to more of an authentic likeness rather than a stylized caricature. Honestly, I'd say Devin has a fairly 'normal' neutral face when he's not yelling on stage, making it more difficult to caricature. It might have been an easier stylization process if you'd done the yelling version; more obvious features to exaggerate.
Authentic likeness is an admirable accomplishment in itself, even though technically the point of the exercise is to exaggerate away from realism. So I'm inclined to grade this submission C+. Certainly worthy of passing👌
PS: I've not heard of Devin Townsend before this. As a guitarist myself, I'm quite enjoying his skills via youtube vids now 🤘
I'm getting a hazy likeness in the back of my mind...he looks like somebody..not quite sure who though 😅 Somebody with intense eyes.
Who is it? And what do you think gave you a hard time ttr1bar?
Did some tweaks and end it up so far, I don't know what else to push it further =(
Any suggestion?
Caricature Bust Sculpt-WIP updated by ken on Sketchfab
And here's my pick of the concept art by another CGCookie memberSpiris
Homework submission Week 1
so here is my stylized Terminator ! i started with a quick sketch sculpt to try to catch likeness, then a went up with more details , clothing and hair.
i went with a bleu cold lights . materials are very basic shaders !
Arnold has a very distinct face with hard cheeks and jaw ! sculpting the nos was the hard part ! and as usual the hair paarticuls!
Ps: i like anatomy :)
Homework Submission Week 1:
I chose Conan O'Brien for my caricature. I was quite lost at first, didn't know how to start. Eventually things started to take some kind of human form and in the end I was kind of surprised of the end result. I don't know if people would recognize him as Mr. O'Brien, or if I chose the right features to exaggerate, but I feel more confident with my sculpting skills (but I know there's more to learn).
And for comparison:
Now, regarding the character concept art, I was wondering if I can make my character a mix of animal and human? Human but with animal features, something in between this characters:
Or should I stay in the human realm?
Thanks so much for the feedback, guys!
Identifying those particular spots really helps me know where to focus. I've been fighting tooth-and-nail to squeeze sculpting time into a packed weekend, but I will make something presentable by deadline. Your tips and notes are a huge help! I'm fired up! :D
By the way, how do you "mention" other users? I thought it'd be @ or even #, but no luck. Hope Kent and Matt both see this and know they're appreciated. :)
Yes he has pretty neutral face when not yelling or making some other weird expressions and I'm lucky that there are so many pictures of him, as like in 5% of them he is neutrally serious.
I try to make ONE MORE sculpt and really push those features mmalhomsi mentioned but it's more important to get the character picture done by the end of the week. Even if the caricature was bad this was good practice in sculpting for me making a human head.
And @theluthier he's a great guitar hero and he's skill in clean singing has improved so much after the younger days
Great Conan :D I think the idea of mixing human and animal features is great. If teaching is about creating human character it would be a nice twist in learning and maybe a fun challenge if you have some extra stuff to figure out yourself.